


now i lay me down to sleep

by cinnappo



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, genre: romance, genre: scifi, length: oneshot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-07
Updated: 2012-09-07
Packaged: 2017-11-28 10:40:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/673478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cinnappo/pseuds/cinnappo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Waking up with no memories is one thing. Waking up with no memories and being handed a gun, is another. Portal!AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	now i lay me down to sleep

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2012 [SNCJ Reverse Big Bang](http://sncj-reversebb.livejournal.com/14733.html). Originally posted 2012/09/07. Now betaed and edited.

  
_now I lay me  
down to sleep;_

When you wake up, you’re in a glass cylinder. You feel strange, like a stranger in your own body. You blink once, twice, look down at your hand. You grip the air to test out your fingers, the intricate joints clanking a little bit.

 _Why can’t I remember anything?_

You look back up from your hand and it is only then that you realize you’re adjacent to another cylinder. You can see a faint reflection of yourself in the glass, one bright orange eye gazing blankly back at yourself, body of metal standing just over a meter and a half.

Then suddenly there’s a whirring noise and you draw your attention from the glass to just beyond it, where machinery in the second cylinder is whirring in the blink of an eye. It takes you a minute to realize there’s another form being assembled, parts forming a body not too different from your own, though the main core is more stout than your own.

When the machinery stops you keep looking, waiting for the other form to move, to speak, to do _something_. And then it blinks, just as you did, clear blue eye rising from bare dim to a bright light. It takes a minute to process the situation, and then it sees you. Tentatively, it raises its arm and gives a little wave.

It takes you longer than it should to realize, you’re supposed to wave back. By that point the other form (robot? person? you honestly don’t know. You don’t even know who or what you are yourself) lowers its arm and slumps a little, almost looking disappointed.

Before you have time to ponder what next, a loud booming voice echoes loudly in your cylinder. You wonder if it’s as loud in the other cylinder.

“Welcome to Aperture Science. This is the cooperative testing initiative. TS1001, Code Name: Kris and TS2001, Code Name: Lay have been assembled. Testing will now commence.”

And then the floor drops out beneath you and you’re falling.

*

“Cooperation is the utmost priority,” the feminine voice emphasizes to the both of you. “Besides the success of the testing, of course. Just follow the teamwork procedures and the results should reflect accordingly. Positive results are a must. Negative results will result in either retesting or disassembly.”

You both were given a sort of gun ( _They’re called Portal guns_ , Lay reminds you) in order to complete the testing. In each test chamber, there are three things: locked doors, switches, and a whole lot of obstacles.

The objectives of each chamber are the same, you find out. It’s just the challenges of them progressively get more challenging. The woman (you think it’s a woman but aren’t entirely sure because she isn’t actually there; you can’t be entirely sure about anything) running the tests runs a few preliminary scans on you and Lay, making sure your ping functions are working properly and that your physical commands are up to par, before sending you both into a large hangar that has several doors leading off to the test chambers.

The first chamber is relatively simple. All you have to do is make portals to navigate the room and get to the door that would be in an otherwise impossible place. There’s a sheet of glass separating you and Lay, to prevent any unwarranted interaction as glass isn’t a portable surface (at least, according to the woman). It takes Lay a little bit longer to figure it out which should annoy you, but it doesn’t for some reason. You can’t progress without him in any case, as the door remains locked until you both reach the switches.

The next few rooms go smoothly as well, until you get to the fifth chamber. The ease with which you both completed the last rooms have lulled you into a sense of false security, Lay even more so. He walks forward without hesitation to survey the room, and doesn’t have time to flinch before a turret you didn’t see on the other side of the room springs to life and guns Lay down.

You watch, stunned, as Lay crumples into countless pieces before you. Your mind is completely blank for a split second before it whirrs into fast forward, working in overdrive to figure out how to compensate for the loss of your partner. How are you supposed to complete these tests now? The woman had said that cooperation was key. You can’t exactly cooperate with yourself.

There’s a tap on you shoulder and you whirl around to see Lay standing there. You blink, look back to where Lay’s remains had been a second before. They’re gone. Lay gives a sheepish chuckle and you look back at him. “How...?”

“Guess I was reassembled,” Lay shrugs. “I’ll be more careful from now on. Sorry about that.”

You stare incredulously at him. How someone could act as if they hadn’t just been blown to smithereens is beyond you. If your head could hurt, you figure it probably would.

You can’t help but wonder how many test chambers exactly are there, as you sigh and start to plan how to get past the turrets. This is going to be a challenge.

*

_i pray, dear lord  
my soul to keep;_

Lay’s definition of careful must be different from yours, because he has to be reassembled at least once in every room thereafter. In one chamber, he takes a fall from a platform and plummets into the water below. In another, he miscalculates the speed from the propulsion gel and doesn’t make a portal in time, smashing into the wall at terminal velocity. In still another he misplaces a thermal redirection cube and puts himself right in the path of one of the lasers.

If you didn’t know any better, you’d think he’s purposely putting himself in situations where he’ll be destroyed.

But you do know better, and you wonder if he’s just spacey or if he’s really that stupid. But you both are built to be intelligent, so that can’t be the case. Unless something in Lay is malfunctioning. That theory is rather plausible, as your memory still seems to be off. You can’t remember anything prior to your activation for these tests. Maybe you just didn’t exist before then, even if it feels like you did. It’s really quite impossible to tell.

Thoughts like these just get in the way, however, so you try not to think about it, no matter how unsettling your apparent amnesia is. Considering you are the so-called “brains of the operation,” you have to keep your head in the game, because you don’t know what happens if both of you are destroyed before one or the other can be reassembled. You wonder if it hurts to be destroyed. You could probably ask Lay, but that would just be rude.

“Come on, Lay. Hurry up and put a portal there, and then run over to that block. I’ll turn on the switch and then you can use the excursion funnel to get to the other side and unlock the door, all right?” you instruct. Lay nods diligently, firing a portal where you told him too and taking his place.

“All set!” he calls, waving a long metal arm at you enthusiastically.

“Don’t screw this up,” you say in reply. “We’ve still got a long way to go before we finish this sequence of testing.” You flip the switch and he uses the block to hop onto the funnel, calmly letting it transport him through the otherwise perfectly solid wall to the other side. You think that this might just go according to plan this time, when he jumps off and a turret you both missed when you disabled the rest guns him down.

You can’t help but smack your forehead in frustration. Of course you spoke too soon. But if there’s anything about Lay that you admire, it’s that he doesn’t get discouraged easily, springing back once he’s reassembled back to where he left off. This time he disables the turret that had been his undoing before completing the original plan, flipping the switch to unlock your door and flashing you a quick thumbs up. You just shake your head and move on to the next chamber.

*

The day comes that the two of you actually complete all of the test chambers. You both return to the hangar, more than a little at a loss of what to do now. You’re both rather quiet, not sure what lies in store for you next.

“Do you think we’re going to be disassembled now that our objective is complete?” Lay asks you quietly. You don’t have an answer for him but you hate admitting that you don’t know, so you don’t say anything. You hope it’s a no, because honestly you don’t know happens when you’re permanently disassembled. You assume it’s similar to what happens when humans die.

Luckily for you, the woman in charge of your testing isn’t quite done with you yet. She has the two of you go off on errands to other parts of the laboratory outside of the testing chambers. She confesses to you that the test chambers were preparation for these “missions” as she calls them, as she won’t be there to guide you. The machines will still automatically reassemble you if you should get destroyed, she reassures. She just needs you to retrieve some packages in the form of certain disks in areas of the lab she’s not permitted to access.

Something tells you that this is rather dodgy, but you can’t call it a gut feeling. After all, how can you have a gut feeling if you don’t have a gut in the first place? So no matter how uneasy the whole task makes you feel, you and Lay set off, Portal guns in hand and ready to find whatever it is you are sent to fetch.

You have to admit, it’s rather liberating not to have an eye watching over your every move, though.

Of course Lay gets destroyed almost immediately once you get outside of the test chamber hangar, accidentally setting off an aerial faith plate and flying straight into the ceiling. At this point you don’t even flinch when he’s reassembled a few meters behind you, going on steady as if nothing had happened, and he sprints to catch up to you.

“I wish you weren’t so cold all the time,” Lay whines at you, Portal gun at the ready in case it is needed.

“I can’t help that I’m not human,” you retort. “We’re robots. We’re meant to be cold. It’s not like we can physically be warm.”

“That’s not what I meant and you know it,” Lay mutters. “You know though, what if we actually were human?” You stop short, turn around expecting him to crack up and tell you he’s just kidding. But he isn’t.

“There’s no point in what ifs, Lay,” you say quietly after a long silence. You can’t tell him that you’ve thought about this too. Well, not that _if_ you were human but that you _wish_ that you were human. “We’re not. That’s that. We have to deal with things as they are.” You turn on your heel again and keep walking

“But how can you be so sure?” Lay protests, running again to catch up. You are half relieved and half annoyed that the woman isn’t here; you know Lay wouldn’t be talking about this if her presence was known. You just aren’t sure if this is a good or a bad thing.

“Because humans don’t just turn into robots,” you spit out more harshly than you intended. There’s a moment of tense silence. “And vice versa,” you add tersely. Lay seems to wrap his mind around your words, and in looking at him you think his jaw would be working, if he had one.

You’re about to leave him there and retrieve the disks yourself when he pushes you onto another rigged aerial faith plate and you go flying. You don’t have time to think about betrayal before you smash into the ceiling.

As it turns out, getting destroyed doesn’t hurt at all. It’s just like feeling yourself stretched apart without pain. And then there’s darkness.

*

 _"....you don’t think we’ll die in here do you?” a familiar voice asks, sounding rather timid._

 _“Of course not,” another voice you recognize as your own replies confidently. “It’s just cryostasis. We’ll sleep for a while and then when we wake up, they’ll have cured the outbreak and we can go home.”_

 _“But what if they don’t let us go home? What if when we wake up, there’s no home to go home to?”_

 _“There’s no point in what ifs, Yixing,” you tell the familiar voice. There’s still darkness but it’s slowly fading into a hazy color, as if you’re looking through a camera lens that’s out of focus. “We have to deal with things the way they are. Or as they will be. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, okay?” It’s clearing more and more an you think you might be able to make out a face soon, though you’re pretty sure it’s a human in front of you... just a little more..._

 _Suddenly it fades to black again._

*

You wake up, blink once, twice. Lay swims into focus and you realize you’ve been reassembled. Lay is staring at you intently, expectantly. And you realize whatever it was that you just saw when you were destroyed, he’s been seeing too. Or at least, he’s been seeing something similar.

“You _have_ been getting destroyed on purpose,” you whisper.

“So you see them too,” Lay breathes in return. “I knew I wasn’t crazy. Erm, malfunctioning, I guess,” he corrects himself. “Do you understand me now, Kris? Do you understand what I mean when I say I think we might actually be human?”

You nod, trying to hold on to the fleeting memory. You know it’s a memory; what else could it be? “But if we’re actually human... where are our bodies?” you ask. Lay shakes his head, and he doesn’t know. Even though Lay must have recovered many more memories in his downtime between destruction and reassembly, that must have been the memory that was thoroughly suppressed. And then it hits him. “Our names... do you remember your name? Your real name?”

Lay nods. “Zhang Yixing,” he says, almost wistfully. As though his name may be the only link they have to their humanity. “I’m sorry, I can’t recall your name though. I haven’t heard it yet,” he adds, almost reading your mind. You’re disappointed, but you don’t let it show.

“We have to find our bodies,” you say instead. Determination you didn’t know you could feel floods your consciousness. “I don’t know what happened to turn us into this, but we’re going to find out.” Lay nods in agreement, relieved now that they’re on the same page.

“But...” Lay starts, looking hesitant about something. “What if she figures out what we’re up to? She can’t be innocent in all of this. She’s been supervising us from the minute we woke up like this. She has to have had a hand in this. Why suddenly all this freedom?”

It strikes a chord in you, because that bad feeling from before surfacing again. “I don’t like it either,” you say after a while. “But for now let’s go along with what she tells us. We can’t let her know we’re on to her.”

“Right,” Lay agrees. “I just hope we’re able to return ourselves to our bodies if we find them.”

“ _Once_ we find them,” you correct him. But he’s right. It’s just a bridge you’ll have to cross when you get there.

*

_if i should die  
before i wake; ___

You let yourself slack more and more on the missions, allowing yourself to be destroyed almost (but not quite) as often as Lay. You don’t want to draw too much attention to yourself, and already the woman is suspicious because of your prior pristine record. You’re able to ward off her questions by telling her the disks she wants are in places that are heavily guarded, and therefore much harder to obtain. You’ve still never seen her in person; every time you both return with a disk she has you install it somewhere for her.

In the meantime, you’ve recovered a multitude of memories. You remember that the human you and Yixing went to this facility together, that there was a plague wiping out people by the thousands and in an attempt to be spared, you both were put into cryostasis. You remember that you had a younger brother, Zitao, who didn’t make it, and parents who were on their way to following him when you left. You remember that Yixing was long alone, except for you. You remember bits and pieces of your childhood, like who your favorite super hero was and the color of your bedroom walls and the prayer you used to say at night.

Even for as many times as the both of you get destroyed, neither of you can remember your name. Neither of you can remember where they put the cryostasis pods containing your pods. Neither of you can remember what each other look like.

Soon enough the woman tells you that she’s recovered (read: you recovered, you and Lay) all of the necessary disks to complete her most vital task. She asks you and Lay, orders you really, to go back into the laboratory one last time, that there is a vault she now has the key to unlock. If you can successfully gain access into the vault, she promises, there will be a great reward.

So the two of you reluctantly go, nervously speculating what might the woman want that was locked up so tightly in this vault. The way is more difficult than any of the tests you both completed and any of the other missions you ventured on. Security, though completely unmanned, is tight. You and Lay both get destroyed, unintentionally this time, numerous times. There’s countless turrets, even malfunctioning ones that just taunt you, high temperature security beams, wind funnels, all the stops pulled.

Somehow, you aren’t quite sure how, but you manage to get into the vault. That pseudo-gut feeling comes back as the doors slowly slide open. If you had a heart, it would have stopped when you step into the room and you see countless cryostasis pods, what must be thousands of people stacked like storages jars along the walls from floor to ceiling.

“Congratulations,” the woman says, disembodied voice booming from somewhere. “You’ve found my new test subjects! I am thoroughly impressed. I wasn’t entirely sold on the use of non-human subjects but I have to admit, you two have proved quite useful to me. Perhaps I will invest in them more in the future. For now, your promised reward.”

Before you have time to even think, you feel yourself being pulled apart piece by piece. The last thing you see is Lay struggling against the machines, sharp, frightened blue eye meeting yours before all is black.

*

 _"Will it help you if I taught you the prayer my parents used to say when I was a kid?” you say to Yixing. The picture is much clearer now, though he is in your arms, your chin resting in his fluffy hair, so you cannot see his face. Yixing nods and you start to speak._

 _“Now I lay me, down to sleep; I pray, dear Lord, my soul to keep; If I should die before I wake--”_

 _“How is that supposed to make me feel better?” Yixing interrupts, spinning around in your arms to face you. The memory you doesn’t react but the you who recalls it takes a sharp breath. He’s gorgeous, the conscious you thinks, but memory Yixing is still talking. “...should make something up that’s not so morbid. And to think your parents said this to their children!”_

 _“You didn’t let me finish,” you laugh softly. “But if you insist, I won’t finish. I was just trying to make you feel better.”_

 _“I know,” Yixing sighs, leaning up to kiss you softly, names being announced on the PA system of the next round for the cryostasis procedure. “I love you, Yifan.”_

 _“I love you too."_

*

When you wake up, you’re in a glass cylinder. You feel strange, like a stranger in your own body. You blink once, twice, look down at your hand. You grip the air to test out your fingers, joints cracking painfully.

You look back up from your hand and it is only then that you realize you’re adjacent to another cylinder. You can see a faint reflection of yourself in the glass, gaunt face and dirty blond hair, eyes sunken from such a long sleep.

And then it hits you.

“Yixing!” you scream, beating your limp arms weakly against the glass. You don’t know how long your human body has been in disuse but it feels like centuries for how weak you are. Suddenly the hatch swings open and you fall to your knees on the grate outside, groaning as you pull the strength from somewhere to stand. A few pods down another hatch swings open and you stumble down to it and there is Yixing, looking lost and confused. You don’t care that you’re naked as the day you were born as you reach into the cylinder and wrap your arms around Yixing tightly, holding him close as though you’ll never let him go.

“I remember everything,” Yixing whispers into your neck, arms sliding around your shoulders and squeezing with what little strength he can muster. “I remember it all.”

“Say my name,” you whisper, more of a plea than a command. Yixing gives a breathy chuckle.

“You are Wu Yifan,” he says. “No, you are _my_ Wu Yifan.”

You pull back to look him in the face, looking just as worse for wear as you, but human. And warm. And you give him a tired smile, and he gives you one back.

You’re too exhausted from sleeping for so long, and too relieved to have Yixing in your arms again, and too overwhelmed with memories, that you don’t see the lone little alarm light blaring at the other end of the Vault. You don’t hear the tiny speaker on it blaring its siren call.

 _Preparing neurotoxins... chamber will begin flooding in 60 seconds. Isolation lockdown will now commence. 59... 58... 57...._

*

_i pray, dear lord  
my soul to take_


End file.
